India Is Now The World's Leading Spam Source

India is now responsible for 9.3 per cent of the world’s spam — up from 8 per cent last year — overtaking the US for the first time, and meaning that it now accounts for more of the email trash than any other country.

There’s an overwhelming trend for spam to come from home computers compromised for use by botnets. In fact, Sophos, the antivirus company, claims that many first-time computer users in rapidly growing economies fall foul of such attacks.

While India’s share has increased, Sophos also reports that the total amount of email spam floating around the internet has actually decreased so far this year. Of course, that doesn’t mean the problem’s going away — merely that some of it is being peddled via social networks instead. [Sophos via BBC]